GREGORY OF NYSSA

GREGORY OF NYSSA, bishop, theologian, St. (ca. 340-ca. 394). Brother of Basil the Great (q.v.), Gregory was the youngest and perhaps most intellectually sophisticated of the Cappadocian Fathers (q.v.). He took little active part in the controversies of the late 4th c. during Basil’s lifetime, though he did accept consecration to the episcopate at the latter’s hands in 370. Following his brother’s death in 379, however, he engaged himself thoroughly and quickly took the lead, remaining the single most important theologian in the East until his death.

Deeply read in Neoplatonism, as well as in prior Church Fathers, especially Origen (qq.v.), Gregory was more inclined toward speculative theology than either his brother or Gregory Nazianzus (q.v.). His concern with Origen and Neoplatonism, together with his loyalty to Basil’s defense of Nicene Orthodoxy, led him to a profound reconsideration of anthropology and cosmology (qq.v.) in light of the Incarnation, and to an expanded defense of Trinitarian theology along the lines Basil had charted. Thus, he wrote his most extensive theological work, the Contra Eunomium, as well as the treatises On the Making of Man (elaborations of Basil’s Against Eunomius and Hexaemeron, respectively), On Not Three Gods, and the opening of his masterful summary of Christian doctrine, The Great Catechism.

The most prolific of the Cappadocians, his works dwelt upon asceticism (q.v.) and mysticism in ways that at once supported his brother’s concerns with monasticism (q.v.), and that provided the groundwork for the systematic incorporation of monastic experience into the dogmatic tradition (qq.v.) of the Church in the great debates of the following centuries. Here one should mention in particular Gregory’s early treatise, On Virginity, the allegorical treatment of Moses’ ascent of Sinai in The Life of Moses, the commentary On the Song of Songs, the treatise on Christian Perfection, and the life of his sister, St. Macrina. He was a defender of Mary as Theotokos (q.v.), but was influenced in his eschatology by Origen’s apocatastasis (q.v.). The work begun by Gregory, i.e., the blending of the experiential with the revelation of God in Trinity and the background of late Platonism (qq.v.), reached a kind of culmination three centuries later in the thought of Maximus the Confessor (q.v.).